The Islamic State in Syrian and Iraq is officially defeated. The UN resolution which allowed other countries to fight ISIS within Syria and Iraq no longer applies. But the U.S. military, despite the lack of any legal basis, wants to continue its occupation of Syria's north-east. The attempt to do so will fail. Its Kurdish allies in the area are already moving away from it and now prefer Russian protection. Guerrilla forces to fight the U.S. "presence" are being formed. The U.S. plan is shortsighted and stupid. If the U.S. insists on staying there many of its soldiers will die.

The Russian Defense Ministry has called the presence of the US air force in Syria illegal.

"An American F-22 fighter actively prevented the Russian pair of Su-25 attack aircraft from carrying out a combat mission to destroy the Daesh stronghold in the suburbs of the city of Mayadin in the airspace over the western bank of the Euphrates River on November 23. The F-22 aircraft fired off heat flares and released brake shields with permanent maneuvering, imitating an air battle," Major-General Igor Konashenkov, the Russian Defense Ministry's spokesperson said on Saturday.

The Defense Ministry has commented on the US claims regarding Syria's airspace, explaining that the majority of near-misses between US and Russian planes in Syria and in the area of the Euphrates were connected with the Washington's attempts to hinder Daesh's defeat.

"The statements of the US Army representatives that a part of the Syrian airspace belongs to the US is puzzling," Konashenkov stated, reminding the Pentagon that "Syria is a sovereign state and a member of the United Nations, therefore, the United States does not own any part of sky."

For a while, everywhere one looked, the media was peddling the same narrative. The Daily Beast described Islamic State fighters as "Assad's henchmen." The New York Times promoted the idea that "Assad's forces" have been "aiding" Islamic State by "not only avoiding" the group "but actively seeking to bolster their position." Time parroted the pro-regime-change line that "Bashar Assad won't fight" Islamic State.

But these popular arguments were, to put it mildly, empirically challenged.

...

Equally contrary to analyst predictions, the group imploded right after external support for the "moderate" rebels dried up. The weakening of the rebels was a major setback for Islamic State because Assad could finally focus his firepower on the group. Fewer weapon shipments into the theater, moreover, meant fewer arms fell into the hands of Salafi jihadists.

...

Although the Islamic State's caliphate is dead, Assad's war on terrorists in Syria is very much alive. Let's hope future analysis of this conflict avoids the kind of anti-empirical ideological advocacy that helped give rise to Al Qaeda in Iraq and then Islamic State in the first place.

French cement group Lafarge paid close to 13 million euros ($15.2 million) to armed groups including Islamic State militants to keep operating in Syria from 2011-2015, human rights lawyers said on Tuesday.

In its 200-page investigation, the weapons tracking organization claimed that more than 30 percent of the arms used by IS extremists on battlefields in Syria and Iraq originally came from factories in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Germany.

Russia and China produced more than half of the weapons held by the terror group, the report added.

Those were probably mostly captured from the Syrian and Iraqi army, the Syrian army especially uses Russian and Chinese arms.

Also:

Quote:

It took only weeks for the Islamic State to get its hands on U.S. antitank missiles

On Dec. 12, 2015, Bulgaria exported antitank missile launcher tubes to the U.S. Army through an Indiana-based company called Kiesler Police Supply. Fifty-nine days later, Iraqi federal police captured the remains of one such weapon after a battle in Ramadi, Iraq, the report says. In another instance, a U.S.-backed rebel group in Syria was photographed using a launcher tube with an identical lot number, indicating it probably came from the same batch, the report says.

She presented the weapons as evidence that Iran is helping destabilize other parts of the Middle East, but a new U.N. report stopped short of that conclusion, saying only that two missiles fired by Houthis — one on November 4 and one on July 22 — seem to have “a common origin.”

U.N. officials are still investigating who made the missiles, but for reasons that were not made clear, Haley is nonetheless claiming certainty that they are Iranian-made.

It's the whole WMD crap again. The houthis are using missiles that used to belong to the Yemeni army, they have for years btw and have fired them at Saudi targets before. They are also active inside the southern Saudi provinces. There is hardly any effective Iranian support because Yemen's only other land border is with Oman, also part of the Saudi coalition although they sent no troops. The sea ports in houthi hands are blocked by the Saudis. So how would they even get any missiles in? This is just cheap crap to distract from Jerusalem and get that war with Iran back on track.

The foundational accusation of Russia-gate was, and remains, charges that Russian President Putin ordered the hacking of Democratic National Committee e-mails and their public dissemination through WikiLeaks in order to benefit Donald Trump and undermine Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, and that Trump and/or his associates colluded with the Kremlin in this “attack on American democracy.”

As no actual evidence for these allegations has been produced after nearly a year and a half of media and government investigations, we are left with Russia-gate without Russia.

The DNC email hack was almost certainly russian intelligence as reported by multiple security firms and the CIA who has said the culprits were also known russian agents. The only evidence presented against this was the claims of known liar, cowering rapist, russia supporting and seething Hillary Clinton hating hermit Assange. Assange has claimed he has evidence to exonerate russia but hasn't produced it. Strangely he also turned down hacks on the russian government while telling everyone Wikileaks publishes everything they receive.

All of that is separate from the collisions allegations which he completely misrepresents as "having contacts." Which makes me think he either doesn't know what he's talking about or is being purposefully misleading, the issue is simplified to,
Russia, "Hey Trump we have some potentially illegally gained information on your rival that will help put you in power, we should make a deal!"
Trump and his people, "Why yes Russia, we would love any outside help from your government and any illegal files you may have!"

And as if all the most damning evidence would necessarily be out in the public at the moment. Nobody leaked the Papadopoulos flip even though it had happened months before Mueller released the information publicly.

Don Jr's meetings with the Russians as part of the "Russian government's support for Trump" with a former Russian counterintelligence agent and people connected to Russian oligarchs, promises of holding off on sanctions, Trump inviting Russia to hack and release State Dept emails, multiple people making deals with Mueller over lying about contacts with Russia, Trump associate Roger Stone knowing about the Podesta hack weeks before the emails were released, etc. etc. add up to nothing, are suggestive of nothing, and are just hysteria. And of course, there can't be anything they're offering in exchange for those deals that we don't know yet. It is typical for someone like Flynn, who there are reports of crazy shit like a multi-million dollar kidnapping plot and violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act for not disclosing his connections to the Turkish government while he was acting as the candidate/president-elect/president's national security advisor, and reportedly got the White House to delay action in Syria on Turkey's behalf... to just get a deal for lying to the FBI in exchange for no evidence of interest. TBH, the Trump campaign's demonstrated eagerness to collude with Russia, even if it came to nothing, ought to be in itself a scandal! So what if they never managed the logistics or Russia was too cautious or whatever? Having a presidential candidate who was willing to collude with a foreign power, including criminal activities (like hacking Clinton's emails!), is already a problem.

And we still don't know about Trump's financial connections. Following the money would also be the big part of any such investigation, and we've gotten very little info about that, although we do know that Trump has some financial connections to Russia (both of his sons made statements in the past about visiting Russia for business many times, getting a lot of money from Russian banks, etc.) and reports like that Trump Tower Panama had connections to Russian organized crime, etc. But 1. we know there's nothing there now, even though we've seen almost none of it and Trump never even released even one year of tax returns like every previous nominee for decades and 2. we'd better stop looking into it because it's all hysteria.

This is a bit like running an article claiming the Watergate investigation is all baloney in August 1973... The perpetrators of the break in were arrested in July 1972. Nixon was in office until August 1974, over two years later. The Saturday Night Massacre didn't happen until over a year after the break in. Republicans were arguing it was all a witch hunt at this point.

And of course, the notion is also based on the idea that James Comey, the Republican who started the investigation and kneecapped the Democratic presidential nominee, Rod Rosenstein, a Republican appointed by Donald Trump, Robert Mueller, a Republican appointed by Rosenstein, and agents within the FBI, who are mostly Republicans, are orchestrating a vast conspiracy against Republican President Donald Trump, a man of scrupulous honesty and unimpeachable ethics.

We know this is all bullshit and the investigation ought to be shut down, I guess. Meanwhile, a minor development in the previously completed investigation of Hillary Clinton's email server deserves AN ENTIRE FRONT PAGE in the most important newspaper, and that "scandal" in general deserves more coverage than EVERY POLICY ISSUE COMBINED.

Iran is joining the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). By early next year, February by this account, Iran will join the five founding members of the Union and open the door for Turkey to do so later in 2018.

Between this and the end of the war in Syria, it’s not hard to declare the Brzezinski Doctrine of U.S.-led Central Asian chaos as gasping its last breaths.

Iran finally joining the EAEU is a response to a number of factors, the most important of which is the continued belligerence by the U.S. Expanded economic sanctions on Iran and the EAEU’s leader Russia has created the need for greater coordination of economic and foreign policy objectives between them.

Dr Ellie Cannon, a GP in South Hampstead, posted a tweet revealing how doctors have to ask patients if they can afford to eat when they come to the surgery complaining of fatigue or unexplained illness.

It went viral and was addressed in a food poverty debate in the House of Commons. Now she has told how in recent years doctors have seen a resurgence in rickets — a disease usually caused by lack of vitamin D or calcium in a child’s diet. It causes bones to become soft and weak, and can lead to deformities as well as pain, fragile bones, tooth decay and poor growth.

Phillips was arrested after a man swinging a baseball bat was caught on video Dec. 7 yelling “ISIS” and “terrorist” at a Colombian family that lives in St. Thomas. Their 13-year-old son recorded the attack with a cellphone camera.

Oman and other Gulf states could seek alternative alliances if Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and US President Donald Trump continue to pursue “stupid” policies that are destabilising the region, a senior Omani official has told Middle East Eye.

“What do you think will happen if the Saudis and the Emiratis go it alone? The other states will look elsewhere for protection,” the official said, referring to Oman, Qatar and Kuwait, the GCC states outside the Saudi-led bloc.

When asked to clarify which countries he meant, he said the options could include Iran, Saudi Arabia's regional rival with whom Oman maintains diplomatic ties, and India, which has a strong trade relationship with the Gulf states.